Q: What is your position within JROTC?

A:  “I am the cadet commander or the president of the organization.”

Q: How long have you been participating in JROTC?

A: “I’ve done it every year since my freshman year. So than three years now.”

Q: As the Cadet Commander, what do you do on a day-to-day basis?

A: “So I’m just a regular student. I go to all my classes, I have a one through seven. But when my ROTC period comes, that’s when the flip kind of switches. Because I can’t be ‘Andy’ when I’m a commander. I just can’t say things that I would normally say. I have my own personality that doesn’t match up with the views of the United States Air Forces. And so I have to embody the views of the United States Air Force. We do that by keeping those two bodies separate.”

Q: What has JROTC done for you as an individual?

A: The professional development that you gain through ROTC is unmatched. If you’re in a leadership position like I am as cadet commander, they really teach you how to be a cadet commander, how to lead at the executive level.  When you’re dealing with conflict, there’s a certain way that you have to approach it with every individual. So yeah, that’s just one thing that JROTC has taught me. And one other great lesson that JROTC has taught me is that it’s it’s possible to recover from every situation, no matter how bad the situation gets.”

Q: What are your plans for after high school?

A: “So I want to go to the United States Air Force Academy. Hopefully I’ll get there and be a pilot with the United States Air Force.” 

Q: What sort of training does that require?

A: “So what I want to do is I want to be a test pilot test on the experimental aircraft that requires obviously your commissioning as an officer in the United States Air Force. And to do that, you need a bachelor’s degree by mandate. So I will have gone to the Air Force Academy for four years, signed my contracts there, and be commissioned into the Air Force. After that, I go off to undergraduate flight training, which will basically get me to the level of a airline transport pilot. And then after that, you start specialized training on jets, on different systems that you can use.”

Q: What is the most valuable experience that you have had in association with JROTC?

A: “So every every summer, the week after graduation we go to this weeklong mini boot camp at the University of Houston. The senior leaders from there and some Air Force officers will come and they’ll basically give us a weeklong little boot camp and give us some leadership training, give us some drill training, and make sure that we’re set to go back and lead our units the following school year. This year I was a flight commander. We had a blast.”